I spent a wretched evening, and when I retired to my room, sleep simply would not come. I got up, with an idea of smoking a pipe, but, first, I crossed to the open window. On a moon-dappled path below the terrace I espied a moving figure; and Burns’s words flashed through my mind: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men…” Nanette was stealing among the flowers, collecting tiny fragments of the torn letter that a light evening breeze had blown from the terrace above. It was a hurt, an affront; but it was the only thing of his she had. CHAPTER VIII. THE CALL “Telegram, sir!” I sat up with a start. Morning sunlight flooded the large bare room. Wild canaries were singing outside my window. Slowly, facts began to assert themselves. I had been dreaming that I was taking tea at Stewarts with the Duchess of York and Mr. Tom Mann, when Trebitch Lincoln had appeared through a window, holding a bomb in his hand. Now, I realized that I had read news of all in a week-old _Daily Mail_ recently; but that actually I was in bed at Reid’s Hotel, Funchal. The radio message that the boy had brought up was crisp enough, but it effectually banished my drowsiness. Please call on British consul at once. Vitally urgent. Am holding you to our bargain. O’Shea. A bargain based upon the survival of so old an institution as the British Empire is not lightly denied: I thought that perhaps my dreams had been prophetic. Nor was Edmond O’Shea the man to send such a message except under stress extraordinary. As I hurriedly bathed, shaved, and dressed, I reviewed the position. There was O’Shea, homeward bound with a packet of letters whose publication would further Red anarchy a number of points. There was myself, George Decies, who in a neutral way had helped to secure these. There was Gabriel da Cunha, agent of the nightmare called Communism, nursing a broken jaw as a result of foregoing transactions. And there was Nanette. Even as her name brought the dainty image to my mind, from under the open window came a soft call: “Coo--oo!” I crossed, struggling with an intractable tie; and there on the balcony below was Nanette. To know that the most provocatively pretty girl one has ever met is madly in love with a better man and to behave sanely in her company is an acid test of what I have heard termed “British poise.” She shaded her eyes with her hands, looking up at me. Her arms were a delicate brown colour on their outer curves where the sun had tanned them, and by comparison ivory white beneath. With a background of flowers against distant sea blue, Nanette made a picture exquisite to remember in old age but disturbing to a comparatively young bachelor. Temptation is sweet only when there is a chance of falling. “What a horrid tie,” she said. “Please wear the gray one with silver stripes, as it’s our last day in Madeira.”